iPhone OS 4 can multitask

Today is the day many iPhone fans have been waiting for. The announcement of iPhone OS 4.0, slated to drop this summer, has brought with it the most requested feature from iPhone users around the globe. Multitasking. How will mutltitasking be added to the iPhone? Apple’s Scott Forstall explains: “We looked at tens of thousands of apps in the app store, and we’ve distilled the services those apps need to run in the background. So we implemented those services, and we’re providing those services as APIs to developers so they can add multitasking while preserving battery life.” Apple will provide seven services that run, in the background, as application accessible APIs: background audio, Voice over IP, background location, push notifications, local notifications, task completion, and fast app switching. The folks from Pandora claim it took them one day to make Pandora fully compatible with the new APIs… lets hope it is this easy for everyone! There’s also an awesome UI for switching between applications, too.

Its amazing to see all the anti-apple posters here in an apple announcement. It seems like the haters were more interested in this announcement than the Apple fan, jumping on every apple post , and you wonder why apple fans troll on android postings. Apple admits its late to the multi-tasking party, but you know what? Consumers don’t care! Apple does not make products to satisfy the geeks here, so hate all you want cause its still going to be a success. I’m the first one to admit that its not new technology they have, they just do it well and package it right. I don’t hate Android, in fact I hope they do well, but until I feel Android has surpassed Apple in popularity and sales, the Iphone still retains bragging rights as far as being King of the hill of….I guess I could say this officially…..Smartphones! Curious to see how much downranking I will get on an Apple post.

MicroNix

At least Apple is keeping consistent with nothing earth shattering in this release. Apple, welcome to what your competition is already doing! I’m amazed at how “big” the media makes anything that comes out of Steve’s mouth. After reading about this release it is now becoming more clear why Apple is suing HTC…there is nothing innovative coming out of the Apple camp anymore to keep them ahead of the game.

Rob

@tino72
THAT’S MY POINT! All anyone else has done is make better task managers that make it easier to turn stuff off when the load gets too heavy. I would prefer to not have to bother. I mean, I would like to have everything that needs to run running, and not notice a slowdown of performance, but if you would rather manage your phones resources than use it for what’s it’s intended, then whatever makes you happy. This is why I’ve been fine without any multitasking so far, so I don’t have to worry about it.

Oh and using the word moron so much only makes everyone picture you as napoleon dynamite…………jeeze

http://www.twitter.com/jazzyl jazzyl

Finally multitasking without jailbreak why did it take apple this long? the next generation iphone im getting it ….

joshdefoore

@MicroNix,

what else do you want your phone to do?

Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone) at: Stephenville North America

time

128Mb isn’t enough. 256Mb is probably better, but I’m willing to bet the 4th gen iPhone will have 512mb. See, the iPhone apps are much larger than Android apps, and in comparison, using the same app on iPhone and the same on Android, Android used less memory to run the app. http://www.electronicswholesaledistributor.com/

Dragon

Much like Cut/Copy/Paste, this is a basic feature that has been shockingly absent for too long. I have an iPhone (although I regret switching from my BlackBerry) and this is one of a dozen or so very intuitive features woefully lacking in the iPhone … hopefully it doesn’t take them until Gen10 to figure out the rest of the basics. In case anyone is in doubt, here are a few major missing featues:

Late for multitasking. Yeah I don’t know if you can call this true multitasking. Can you run 10 apps in the background whithout having them suspended. Fast app switching what is that being able to switch apps quickly and make one app suspended and completely inactive. Sounds like apple has found a way to call there OS multitasking without actually making it multitasking. What were they afraid the hardware couldn’t handle it… LOL…

Rotten_Apple

Wow welcome to 2006 Apple! Apple makes products for people who like sparkly things and are lacking in the tech skills, My 2 year old Bold still can do more than my wife’s new Iphone, we’re both use them non-stop but my data usage and WPM emails puts hers to shame.

ricktheprick

Hmmmmm………. iPhones, iPods, iPads, iTunes – iDon’t care.

Fakeer

The reason why Apple comes in late and eats the cake is because simply because of it’s undeterred focuses on people rather than technology. Cutting edge technologies are brought into the market quickly but the edges are always rough. Technology is inherently alienating to the masses and it’s this bridge that Apple builds and people just get on it! So the people care about not how much they can do with a gadget but how easily and naturally they can do it.

We geeks do not the market make.

Johan

Why make closing apps so complicated? First you have to press and hold, and then click on the minus sign. After that, press home button again. Why not just flick the icon upwards, like on Palm Pre?

jonathan

@Fakeer,

Unfortunately you have to keep reminding the apple haters about that over and over again.